morning and clean
up the "dixies" after breakfast. The "dixie", by the way, is an
iron box or pot, oblong in shape, capacity about four or five
gallons. It fits into the field kitchen and is used for roasts,
stews, char, or anything else. The cover serves to cook bacon in.

Field kitchens are drawn by horses and follow the battalion
everywhere that it is safe to go, and to some places where it
isn't. Two men are detailed from each company to cook, and there is
usually another man who gets the sergeants' mess, besides the
officers' cook, who does not as a rule use the field kitchen, but
prepares the food in the house taken as the officers' mess.

As far as possible, the company cooks are men who were cooks in
civil life, but not always. We drew a plumber and a navvy (road
builder)--and the grub tasted of both trades. The way our company
worked the kitchen problem was to have stew for two platoons one
day and roast dinner for the others, and then reverse the order
next day, so that we didn't have stew all the time. There were not
enough "dixies" for us all to have stew the same day.

Every afternoon I would take my mess orderlies and go to the
quartermaster's stores and get our allowance and carry it back to
the billets in waterproof sheets. Then the stuff that was to be
cooked in the kitchen went there, and the bread and that sort of
material was issued direct to the men. That was where my trouble
started.

The powers that were had an uncanny knack of issuing an odd number
of articles to go among an even number of men, and vice versa.
There would be eleven loaves of bread to go to a platoon of fifty
men divided into four sections. Some of the sections would have ten
men and some twelve or thirteen.

The British Tommy is a scrapper when it comes to his rations. He
reminds me of an English sparrow. He's always right in there
wangling for his own. He will bully and browbeat if he can, and he
will coax and cajole if he can't. It would be "Hi sye, corporal.
They's ten men in Number 2 section and fourteen in ourn. An' blimme
if you hain't guv 'em four loaves, same as ourn. Is it right, I
arsks yer? Is it?" Or,

"Lookee! Do yer call that a loaf o' bread? Looks like the A.S.C.
(Army Service Corps) been using it fer a piller. Gimme another,
will yer, corporal?"

When it comes to splitting seven onions nine ways, I defy any one
to keep peace in the family, and every doggoned Tommy would hold
out for his onion whether h